


i've mended this broken heart of mine as best i could

by IamShadow21



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, Christmas Party, Community: hrholidays, Declarations Of Love, Estrangement, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Grimmauld Place, Happy Ending, Harry Ron Holidays Christmas 2014, Holiday Fic Exchange, House Elves, Isolation, M/M, Melancholy, Not Epilogue Compliant, Pining, Post-Battle, Requited Love, Sad with a Happy Ending, Self-Discovery, The Burrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry's given Ron all the distance in the world. He's stepped back so far that their friendship is just a flicker of rosy memory in his past. That's what Harry thought they needed when he took a chance and told Ron how he felt and Ron had said no.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've mended this broken heart of mine as best i could

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kedavranox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedavranox/gifts).



> Written for Harry Ron Holidays Christmas Fest 2014 for this prompt:  
> 
>
>> 12\. Username: kedavranox  
> Time Period: Post Hogwarts (over 25)  
> Scenario: A few years ago, at Christmas, Harry told Ron how he felt. Ron gently, but firmly turned him down, and Harry took the rejection hard, and slowly but surely, deleted himself from Ron's life. Now, a year later, Harry -alone at Grimmauld place, saddened again by Christmas eve, and the memory of Christmas past- has a surprise visitor, with some surprising revelations.  
> Squicks: Hermione or Ginny bashing.  
> Special Requests/Comments: I'd love it if Ron could tell Harry he missed him like hell! Sad and sombre/bitter Harry, please!
> 
> Thanks to kath_ballantyne for looking over this and giving lovely praise, as always. 

“What? No...”

Ron's eyes are shocked, his hands gentle on Harry's shoulders as he pushes him back. 

It's like a flood of icy water that washes away Harry's tipsiness, the warmth of the fire gone in a heartbeat. The intimacy of a moment ago seems cruelly distant. 

“I love you,” Harry had finally said, buoyant and happy, curled up next to Ron on the sofa, one of Ron's long, freckled arms wrapped around Harry's shoulders. 

“I love you too, mate,” Ron had said in return, as if expressing such a sentiment was easily done.

After that, Harry had felt almost confident when he leaned in for a kiss.

His lips had never reached their target. Instead, Ron's hands had held him away.

“Not like that,” Ron continues. “Like, a mate, not like...that.”

He's not angry. He's apologetic. Somehow, that hurts Harry more than if Ron had gotten steamed and slugged him for it.

“Right,” Harry says. “Sorry. Stupid of me. Must be the firewhiskey.”

“Right,” Ron says, but he doesn't stop looking at Harry. 

Harry makes it through the rest of the holiday, barely. He smiles at the right times, wears his newest jumper from Molly, plays with the latest additions to the family. Teddy, the eldest, is only a handful of years away from Hogwarts and has already demonstrated a handful of small magics besides his inborn Metamorphmagus abilities. He's gained some measure of control over the transformations, but sudden surprises and mood changes shake it. His hair's been a dozen different colours over the course of the day, and shifted like a kaleidoscope while the presents were being unwrapped and while he was eating himself into a stupor.

Celestina Warbeck warbles from the wireless, the rug is a sea of colourful paper that the babies all seem to be trying to eat, and the bickering has been at a minimum. It's all very idyllic. 

Harry's surrounded by everyone he loves that lives, and yet, he's never felt so out of place. 

He can feel Ron's eyes on him from time to time, but he won't let himself turn to meet his gaze.

He doesn't know how he'd bear it if he did, and saw pity in his eyes.

*

What Harry felt was solid between them suddenly seems fragile. There's a hesitancy that seems to be mutual, a forced nature to their conversation, awkward silences where there once was quiet companionship. It creeps first into their friendship, then colours their work relationship.

It's intolerable.

One dark, lonely evening, Harry comes to a decision.

First, he takes a little leave. He's got plenty accrued.

“I need a break,” he says with a smile that feels pasted on. “I'll be back soon enough.”

“Course you will,” Ron says, but there's a downward tick at the corners of his mouth and something knowing in his deep blue eyes that Harry can't bear to look at for long, like staring into the sun.

Secondly, he starts spending his new free time away. Anywhere but with Ron. He comes up with some pretty good excuses, he thinks, but on the whole, he's not thinking too hard about why, just that he needs to get out.

Thirdly, he finds somewhere that's just his own and slowly relocates there. He removes his belongings, little by little, a few at a time. He thinks he's being subtle until one day, he's stuffing the last few pieces of clothing into a bag and he realises the room is bare, impersonal. He's taken everything but the furniture that came with the space.

“So that's it, then?” 

Ron is standing in the doorway, looking miserable.

“I guess it is,” Harry says.

Harry expects Ron to bar his way, maybe, to tell him he's not going anywhere.

It hurts more than the initial rejection that he just shuffles aside and lets Harry walk right out of their flat, and his life, without a fight.

*

Grimmauld Place is grim, as always, but not so grim as it once was. Harry had visited the place a few months prior to the incident with Ron simply to ensure it wasn't turning into a magical hazard of crumbling walls and fraying wards to find the entryway surprisingly free of grime.

“Harry Potter!” chirped a high, happy voice. “Master has come home?”

The voice belonged to a tiny house elf, one of the smallest he'd ever seen. Her ears were small and perky, her nose pert and her face bright and cheerful.

“Where's Kreacher?” he asked.

The house elf folded her hands respectfully in front of her bright orange tea towel.

“Kreacher has finished his service to the Noble House of Black,” she said quietly, and Harry infers the meaning behind her words.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Harry said, because there wasn't much else to say under the circumstances. “Is there anything I can do? Does he have family that need looking after?”

The little elf visibly blushed, her ears pinking at the edges. “Master is very kind,” she said. “Kreacher had no elflings of his own. Kreacher was Dainty's great-great-uncle.”

“So you inherited his post?” Harry asked, and she nodded.

“Dainty was the eldest of her family not already in service. Dainty is honoured to serve Harry Potter,” she said with the fervent, nervous enthusiasm of the very young.

“I'm very honoured to have you serve me,” Harry said gravely, and held out his hand for her to shake.

Dainty has settled a little since that initial nervous meeting, and has shown that she is eager more than skilled at her profession, light of heart and talkative. She fusses around Harry when he steps into the house, shooing him towards the warmth of the kitchen and levitating his bags up the stairs.

Behind the wall at the narrow point of the landing, there is a muffled, angry buzzing when a bag knocks against a bannister, which they both pretend not to hear. They hadn't been able to remove the portrait, even with Dainty's house elf magic, but building a partition in front of it had been something practical and easy to execute to make life at Grimmauld Place more pleasant.

“You don't feel you need to serve her?” Harry had asked.

Dainty looked slightly offended. “Old Mistress's painting is a painting,” she said slowly. “Dainty serves her Master, not a painting.”

“Right, of course. Good,” Harry had said.

In the kitchen, if the corners are not scrubbed out to St Mungo's standard, the room is at least light and warm with a kettle just starting to sing and a pot of stew simmering on the hob. There is a basket of mending spread out neatly at the far end of the long table, and a small Wireless, Harry's gift to Dainty on beginning her service, is chirping out a popular tune.

It's still Grimmauld Place, but it's ten times more welcoming than the flat he had shared with Ron had become by the end. Really, he feels nothing but relief.

“Dainty has not finished cooking yet,” she says, bustling back into the room and spelling the kettle off the fire. “Dainty can make Master tea and bread and butter.”

Harry rests his tired head on his hand and feels a rusty smile curve his lips. “That'd be lovely,” he says.

*

Harry is a man of means, if not wealth. The combined amounts in both the Potter vault and Sirius's vault will allow him to live frugally for some time with shrewd investments, or so his lawyer tells him.

Harry Owls his resignation to the Aurors the next day.

Life at Grimmauld Place becomes the norm. No amount of refurbishing or cleaning will ever make it a cheerful house, but with Dainty's help it becomes a less dour one. Old paint and paper is covered over with new, heavy, dark curtains are replaced with thinner ones designed to let in the sunlight, and ebony and mahogany are polished to a glossy shine. Harry decides to close up the upper levels of the house entirely for the time being. The formal dining room is likewise closed, since he eats every meal in the kitchen listening to Dainty's pleasant chatter. The sepulchral parlour, stripped of its gloomy décor and with the chimney properly cleaned and mended becomes a combination of living room and study. The Black library defanged of the worst of its curses and with the most dangerous books corralled and quarantined into a section he leaves alone is the best he's seen outside of Hogwarts or the enormous, dizzying antique bookstore Remus Lupin once took him into in Mardjin Alley, where necromancer's grimoires sat side by side with children's fairy tales and alchemy workbooks were shoved in beside Muggle car repair manuals. 

“The trick is knowing what you're looking for,” Remus said with a crooked smile. “And of course being willing to dig to find it.”

His Point Me had led them three levels down below the cobblestone street to an aisle they had to turn sideways to fit down. The book in question was behind a mismatched set and a half of the Encyclopaedia Magica from about two hundred years ago, and a box of Monster Books of Monsters shedding hair and missing most of their teeth.

Remus had hummed with pleasure when he unearthed the little green tome, well-worn around the edges and somewhat stained.

“Lovely,” he'd said. “Out of print for seventy years and quite illegal for just about anyone to actually possess. And it's seventeen Sickles.”

That little green book was on the shelf now beside Harry's school books and Quidditch magazines. It seemed quite innocuous for something that the Ministry could have decided was worth banning.

“Knowledge is dangerous, Harry,” Remus had said, when his purchase was safely tucked into a paper bag. “Certain kinds of knowledge make those in power nervous. It's not Dark, not really, but it does suggest a certain freedom from accepted schools of thought on which kinds of magic are considered palatable and right, and which are not. It talks about the cost to the witch or wizard, not about society. And the Ministry would be very frightened if one day, the magical populace decided to weigh their actions not by laws, but by their own conscience. They think it would invite chaos.”

“But wouldn't it?” Harry had asked.

“Those who want to use their power to harm others will do it whether you have laws in place or not,” Remus pointed out. “What a culture of blindly following laws does is allow otherwise moral people to justify acting in a way that under normal circumstances, they would find repugnant. Laws are important, Harry, but they enable brutality and violence just as often as they prevent it.”

Harry remembered a phrase he heard once, on a documentary saw years ago, when he was alone in the Dursley's house. “Just following orders,” he murmured, and Remus turned his gaze on him, sharp and pleased.

“The Nuremberg Defence. Just so,” he said. “True evil is when good men stand by and do nothing, Harry. The judgement for when and how you should act comes from your conscience. When you continually look to others and not to your own self for moral guidance, there is the risk of that conscience wasting away. Once lost, it is not easily regained,” Remus warned.

Harry has never forgotten that lesson. In his small quiet life at Grimmauld Place, he tries to live by it. He donates regularly to charities. He visits Andromeda Tonks often, and is a doting godfather to young Teddy. He is endlessly patient and affectionate with Dainty, who is steadily learning her trade through persistence and hard work.

He keeps himself away from Ron in particular and Weasleys in general. Maybe that's less of him trying to be a good person and more like cowardice, but he'd rather not examine his motives too closely. 

What? No, Ron had said.

If Harry's living by his conscience, now, then whatever his motives, he can't countenance pressing his favour where it isn't wanted. He'd rather be absent, than be an unwelcome suitor.

*

Isolation was making something of a scholar of Harry. It was something that Remus and Hermione would have approved of, no doubt. For Harry, the motivation is less to improve himself and more to get a richer concept of the world he lives in but was not raised in. Certain things Ron and other wizardborn children knew simply by virtue of growing up immersed in wizard culture were just as unknown to Harry as if he'd grown up in another country.

The Black library is a kaleidoscopic collection of Dark and light, history and fable, spellbook and personal diary. The journals of what Harry determines to be Sirius's great-uncle are a rather captivating account of the blithe disregard for the niceties of society and the rather murky grey moral compass of a true son of the Great and Noble House of Black. Harry certainly doesn't take away any of the long dead wizard's words as words of wisdom, but they are enlightening on the subject of pureblood supremacy and the attitudes held but not necessarily openly espoused by the wizarding aristocracy. Reading them as a precursor to Voldemort's rise to power certainly put a lot of things into context that Harry just plain didn't understand when he was actually fighting Death Eaters and hunting Horcruxes. Oddly enough, he finds a little peace just in the resolution of those unanswered questions.

Finding a handsome box of blank books free from anything except the usual preservation spells decides him on something. Never a great letter or essay writer, he determines, nevertheless, to write about his own experiences. After all, if he doesn't do it, Rita Skeeter will, and make a right mess of it, too.

*

“Master is too pale,” Dainty says disapprovingly. 

After months spent together alone in the house, the bloom is off the rose with Dainty. She loves him fiercely, but her worship has abated enough that she has taken to bossing him shamelessly into eating and sleeping and bathing, whenever she thinks he needs it. 

“Master will take tea outside today,” Dainty decides.

“Outside?” Harry says, blinking.

“In the garden,” Dainty clarifies.

“It's November,” Harry protests.

“Is December,” Dainty says. “And Master's garden is Charmed to be warm.”

“We have a garden?” Harry asks.

The garden is a courtyard, expanded a little bigger than the space logically should be, but still, nothing like the rambling space around the Burrow, or the rocky wild hillsides around Hogwarts. Dainty's touch is obvious, here, and Harry wonders what the neat little square looked like before her arrival. The central, cartwheel shaped bed has been carefully revived into a tidy, healthy kitchen garden, each wedge featuring a different crop, and the rosebushes around the walls show signs of a recent, heavy pruning beneath their late blossoms. 

In the centre of the wheel stands a single, ancient fig tree, with twisted roots and branches stretching up past the second story windows. On the swept and scrubbed flagstones is a small heavy iron garden table and two matching chairs. The twisting designs are snakes rather than vines or flowers, but it is painted a bright clean white and free of rust. On it, sits the everyday tea service and the Daily Prophet.

“Master will sit in the sun and eat his breakfast, or Dainty will be very disappointed,” she says firmly, before disappearing back into the scullery.

Harry sighs and sits without protest. While he's pouring his tea, he glances at the Prophet. According to the date at the top, it's Christmas Eve. 

A year. It's been a year since he said the words he'd been wanting to say for almost half his life, and been rebuffed. Long enough that his days out in the world as an Auror seem strange and distant and dreamlike. Long enough that he's read through two shelves of the Black library, and filled nearly a whole blank volume with his thoughts and memories. Long enough that Dainty is comfortable in her position and practised enough in her skills that her cooking is unfailingly lovely and Harry hardly ever sees a stray cobweb or dull patch in a polished surface any more.

Not nearly long enough for the absence of Ron to feel like anything less than an open wound, or a missing limb.

Harry forces himself to eat his breakfast, but it sits in his belly like a stone.

*

Despite the Warming charms on the garden, Harry is forced to retreat inside by a light snowfall that turns to rain the moment it touches the wards. Dainty begrudgingly accepts that Harry can't be held accountable for the weather and nags him into stripping out of his damp clothing and into a dressing gown. Before he can stage a retreat to the library, Dainty has coaxed him to sit in front of the crackling parlour fire and pressed a large mug of cocoa into his hands.

“I'm not ill,” he insists.

“Master is not taking care of himself. Master should take care of himself,” Dainty reprimands.

“That's what I've got you for,” Harry says with a small smile.

Dainty huffs, but her ears pink with pleasure.

*

Despite not feeling anything but fine, Harry slips into a doze with alarming ease. He drifts on the edge of sleep for some time, his disordered, foggy mind focussing on a wildly speculative article on page seven of the Prophet.

 _HARRY'S HIDEAWAY?_ The headline trumpeted.

The article below was filled with a large number of ridiculous rumours of where he was and what he was supposedly doing, which ranged from chanting with an obscure order of monks in the Himalayas to buying an island and keeping company on it with a large number of nubile young people. The writer speculated on the shocking nature of the parties he held there with a delicious tone of horror Rita Skeeter would have been proud of.

None of the rumours are anything like the truth, which satisfies Harry, as much as salacious spiteful gossip can ever satisfy anyone. He already ignores all mail that doesn't bear an official Ministry seal, and even half of those end up on the fire after a casual glance. The rest are relegated, unopened, to a small shelf by the kitchen window, right where the mail owls tend to call. He certainly doesn't immediately decide to ward the door and Floo against all callers. He never has any visitors, anyway. Certainly none who've bothered to even try to find him here. It wouldn't be hard for a friend to do so, unless they believed all that guff about a private island.

Maybe that's why when the knocker sounds its heavy retort, for a moment, he doesn't recognise it for what it is. Mrs Black starts yelling from behind the false wall, like the muffled din of a television turned up in a nearby house. He flicks a silencing charm at the wall for good measure, and turns towards the door just in time for Dainty to open it.

The man on the mat is bedraggled and damp, with melting snow on his shoulders and in his hair. His robes hang in heavy folds, and he looks rather lost and almost frightened.

Dainty doesn't step aside or gesture him in. Rather, she stands firmly in place and asks in a rather frigid tone, “You is here to see the Master?”

“Er, yes,” Ron says.

“Dainty needs your name, before she will see if the Master is home,” she continues. 

“But he's...” Ron gestures in Harry's direction, but Dainty fails to move. “Ron,” he finally concedes. “Ron Weasley.”

“You is waiting here,” Dainty says, and moves to shut the door in Ron's face.

“It's all right,” Harry finally says. “Dainty, I'll see him.”

“If Master is sure,” Dainty says with a sniff. “You is not messing up Dainty's nice clean floor,” she continues.

Ron bends to untie his bootlaces, and after wrestling with the stubborn knots, carries them over the threshold in his hands while Dainty points him in the direction of an out of the way corner.

“Master is wanting tea?” Dainty asks, when she's satisfied that Ron can be trusted to hang his water-logged cloak and outer robes to dry without her prompting.

“Tea would be lovely, thank you,” Harry says, and Dainty disappears into the kitchen. 

Ron, standing silent and damp in his stocking feet in the entrance hall is somehow all at once pathetic and intimidating and the most welcome sight Harry's seen all year. He doesn't know how much of that conflict shows on his face, but it's boiling under his skin. So he does the only thing he can think of. He falls back on civility.

“Won't you come in?” he asks coolly and walks back into the parlour without waiting for Ron's answer.

“I don't think your house elf likes me much,” Ron says. He's hovering in the doorway despite the welcoming fire and the moisture still dripping from his hair onto his collar.

“Dainty isn't used to me having company,” Harry says, busying himself by the drinks cabinet. “Brandy? I haven't any firewhiskey.”

“No, thanks,” Ron says.

Harry pours himself a large measure and sits down by the fire, where he'd been so comfortable only minutes ago. Ron only steps into the room when Dainty bustles through with the tea tray, shooing him out of the doorway like a naughty child.

“You look ill,” Ron says eventually. “Too pale.”

“Nonsense,” Harry says. “I'm sunning myself on a moveable island in the Mediterranean with beautiful people around me.”

“The Prophet is bollocks, always has been,” Ron says. “I don't think any of your real friends believed a word of that.”

Harry makes a scoffing noise that sounds incredibly bitter to his own ears. He drinks a little more, just for something to do that isn't staring at Ron.

“I tried writing to you,” Ron says tentatively.

“I never read mail,” Harry says dismissively, and there's a slight flash of anger behind the hurt expression on Ron's face.

“Why not?”

“Because it's all just words,” Harry says. “My friends, my _real_ friends, you called them? If they had something important to say, they'd come and say it to my face. And guess what, Ron? I've been here a year, I've never changed the wards and you're the first person who's ever so much as knocked on the bloody door.”

“Maybe people figured you wanted to be left alone,” Ron says.

“Well, maybe they figured right,” Harry says, draining his glass.

Ron has barely touched his tea, and he looks pale behind the freckles. “I missed you,” he says quietly, like it's a secret.

“Missed me so much you beat down the door after only twelve months,” Harry spits. “Yeah, well, let me save you some time. You can tell your mother you tried to convince me to come, or tried to find me and couldn't, I really don't care. You've done what you've been told to do, so you can leave and forget about me and go back to your happy heterosexual life. Okay?”

Harry's on his feet, though he doesn't remember standing. He gestures at the parlour door, but Ron doesn't stand. He doesn't leave.

“I think you should go, now,” Harry says coldly.

“You've got it all wrong,” Ron says, looking if anything even whiter.

“Really? I don't think I do,” Harry says, turning his back on him and walking over to pour himself another drink.

There's a clumsy clatter of china behind him and then Ron is wrapping one large hand around Harry's wrist, stopping him from picking up the bottle.

“Let me go,” Harry says.

“You're not listening,” Ron says, a desperate edge to his voice.

“I've heard enough,” Harry says, tugging at Ron's grip.

“You haven't heard a damned thing,” Ron says and turns Harry in place.

Ron's eyes are wild and black, his lips are bitten and red and he's standing so, so close. Close enough that Harry can smell his scent, familiar and warm.

“I said, I _missed_ you,” Ron hisses vehemently.

Ron takes a deep breath, as if he's about to shout, but he doesn't shout. He licks his lips as though steeling himself and dips down close.

“I missed you,” he whispers fervently.

Somehow, the kiss still comes as a surprise. Somehow, it still makes Harry's heart race and his knees weak. He's kissing back with all of his might, because _this_... this was what Harry had hoped for. This is the kiss that Harry had dreamed about for years, the one that died stillborn twelve months ago in the living room of the Burrow, when they'd both had a little too much to drink and when the radio had been playing sentimental holiday tunes.

This was what he'd waited for since the first time he'd looked at Ron and seen his beauty, rather than just seeing a friend.

“I'm sorry,” Ron whispers between kisses. “I'm sorry I made you wait. I'm sorry I was scared.”

“Shh,” Harry says, petting Ron's cool, damp skin, his wet hair. Ron is shaking, and Harry doubts it's just from the cold. “It's okay. Everything's okay.”

“Did I make you wait too long?” Ron asks, his voice fearful and cracking with emotion.

“No, no you didn't,” Harry assures him, holding him close. “I thought so, but now, I don't think you did. You're here now. It's okay. We're going to be all right.”

*

The Burrow is a dizzying riot of colour and sound and people after so long spent alone. He's kissed and hugged and touched by more people in ten minutes than he has been since he moved to Grimmauld Place, and it's enough to make him feel faint.

Ron neatly distracts his mother from clucking over Harry for too long, reminding her of the myriad dishes still cooking that require her attention, then guides Harry to a quieter corner of the living room, out of the main flow of traffic and away from his older brothers who are currently singing along to the Wireless, albeit with lyrics the readers of Witch Weekly certainly wouldn't have approved of.

Harry finds himself tucked up neatly on the settee with a glass of mulled wine in his hand and Ron's long, warm arm wrapped around his shoulders.

“All right?” Ron asks tentatively.

“All right,” Harry agrees and snuggles in close, tucking his head under Ron's chin.

Just as Mrs Weasley's voice rises above the choir, threatening to hex the lot of them mute, Ron's head dips down and he presses a soft kiss to Harry's forehead.

“I love you, too,” he whispers. “I really do.”

“I know,” Harry says and smiles.


End file.
